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NERFS and why they suck

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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    PvPers like the ships they are flying as well, so it doesn'T matter if they hate PvE or not. They can't "nerf" you for PvE if they don't nerf it for PvP as well.

    But how do you determine something is balanced or not without PvP? Would a Super-Phaser Cannon that instantly destroys entire Borg Cubes be a real problem for PvE? Maybe someone would complain there is no reason to play anything but the super-phaser-cannon ship.

    The only point where people really complain about balance issues for PvE is overpowered enemies that one-shot you, or ridicidilous Zerg Fest Raids. But the opposite direction - do people really complain stuff is too easy and suggest changes? Yeah, I hear it for the Borg (but I also hear a few opposing voices), but there clearly the expectation is different - the Borg are expected to be OP and unbeatable... Unlike every other race.

    But how many complain that Klingon NPCs ships are lame-sauce? I mean, this is supposedly our major enemy currently. The ships seem to have the most generic and boring powers. The only thing vaguely intersting are the BoPs that occassionally cloak ineffectually.

    I would argue that the changes to PvP could have made PvE worse - they made it too easy. I find it hard to believe there is anything in a regular mission that could threaten a Cruiser build for "tanking" or healing. The PvP enabled Cruiser is full of self-defense skills that have to deal with 3-4 enemies focusing fire on you - and survive. There aren't any NPCs in this game that can approach this degree of firepower. Possibly not even at Elite difficulty!

    Switching to Champions Online was almost a shock for me! Suddenly there were dangerous and difficult enemies for my Single Blade Archetype toon! Of course, I am still wet behind the ears... But I noticed that I get the interesting and motivating mix of frustration and successes that I expect from a good game. I can't claim the same for PvE.

    Ultimately often imbalances are irrelevant for Solo PvE. If you're just playing your Captain and ship, you got nothing to compare yourself to. But once you add additional players, balance becomes important. It matters whether anyone wants to have your Captain type and your ship in an STF, or if you can get the trophy and item reward for a Fleet Action.
    If you actually have to beat other players in a direct fight, balance becomes even more important.

    But - there is only a minority of players regularly involved with Raids or PvP. So it's no surprise that most people just see the nerfs the PvP community brings.

    But there weren't just nerfs ...

    Some PvP Buffs:
    • Shield Power Grants up to 35 % Resistance.
    • Hazard Emitters grants more healing then before
    • Transfer Shield Strength finally provides its initial larger healing and a significant heal over time
    • Auxillary to Structural Integrity Field was considerably buffed
    • Emergency Powers can be chained perfectly and Emergency Power to Shields is a significant resistance buff
    • Beam Fire At Will used to effect only a single beam
    • Science Ships got the Sensor Analysis Power and +15 Auxillary Power instead of +10 (and even before the Science Powers were slaved to Aux, Science Vessel PvE was the slowest)
    • Charged Particle Burst shield drain was increased
    • Tachyon Beam shield drain was increased

    Would any of this have been necessary for PvE alone? Would the great cooldown mechanical overhaul worked out so well in Season 2 without an active PvP community?

    Today, almost all powers and abilities are actually useful, and the PvP communtiy is always suggesting how to improve the final few ones that still are not.

    Yes, we also got a lot of stuff nerfed and changed. But the goal is to make all the various powers and equipment pieces useful. But none of them overpowered.

    What only is left to do for the rest of the community - find some champions to finally give the NPCs some teeth, and not just some boring hit point sponges with the occassional instant-kill-crit possibility at higher difficulty levels - actually make those encounters dynamic and challenging.

    You act as if the dev team is completely unable to balance things for pve without pvp input, when as you say, pvp is a very different game than pve. We don't need the pvp community to balance pve. I know you think we do but we do not. If something is overpowered for pve than the dev team is completely capable of fixing it, since they do in fact play these missions. They have testers on staff who do just that.

    I'm not against improving enemy AI. The difficulty slider should have increased difficulty, unfortunately it just made people do the same thing they were doing before but do it longer for the same result.

    Another problem is that pve missions don't change much after they're made. The pvp metagame changes all the time. So you change this, nerf that, and someone comes up with a new build, then we nerf again...and I reiterate that this is about 100 people at the top tier doing all of this to all of us. I wish this to stop. I don't value the input of the pvp community for pve, while you think you/they are providing a valuable service. I guess we wont be convincing each other today.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Kamiyama10 wrote:
    Maybe they could let people create PVP matches with custom rule sets. Like I could start up a PVP match with Science ships only, and mines turned off. People could see that match when they open the PVP window and join it just like they could any other match.

    They could give us options to set what type ships would be allowed, what weapons would be allowed, etc.

    That way the whiners could play PVP in cruisers with everything but phaser beam arrays turned off, and everyone else could play normal PVP.

    The queues are a wasteland now. If youre lucky enough to find a match, you're most likely cannon fodder for the top 100 players who dominate pvp and play pvp exclusively. So lets divide up the matches even more. Frankly we should be shutting down half the maps we have now so we can find a match in under a half hour. But pvp is a wasteland because nobody wants to play it with you guys. You'd need about 4 times the number of people actively playing as you have now just to make it viable. So lets set up the separate rooms, and good luck finding a match. I'm sort of for this idea, since maybe it will find a way to keep the pvp community out of pvp matches.

    You lost all credibility when you refer to people you don't like/agree with as whiners. One man's whining is another man's reasoned argument. You just whined about whiners. Pretty soon you'll be crying and qq'ing. As if anyone reads this stuff and sobs at their computers. Argue the argument, don't resort to lazy argument by namecalling. It's just demeaning yourself to everyone who isn't a lazy arguer themselves.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Solo PVE is so simple in this game you can win with auto attack. The ships do a lot less damage and only use a ability ever fifteen to thirty seconds. They basically only use auto attack against you. There is no need to counter any of there attacks. All you need to do is adjust your shields sometimes.

    Nerfs would still happen if there was no PVP. Because if Tactical always out did everyone in damage every fleet action, they would get nerfed. If engineers never got close to dying while others died quickly around them they would get nerfed.

    If PVE is to simple, which it is, if it's to repetitive, which it is. Players will walk away and go somewhere else. Because it's boring and not challenging. PVE NPC's need a serious buff. They need to use more abilities more often in solo game play, with a damage increases.

    Just like mentioned above the PVP crowd never gets thanked, for the abilities they get improved. They just get scorned for the abilities they point out that are to strong. If a ability is to strong for PVP, then it's three times to strong for PVE.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Englebert wrote:
    Solo PVE is so simple in this game you can win with auto attack. The ships do a lot less damage and only use a ability ever fifteen to thirty seconds. They basically only use auto attack against you. There is no need to counter any of there attacks. All you need to do is adjust your shields sometimes.

    Nerfs would still happen if there was no PVP. Because if Tactical always out did everyone in damage every fleet action, they would get nerfed. If engineers never got close to dying while others died quickly around them they would get nerfed.

    If PVE is to simple, which it is, if it's to repetitive, which it is. Players will walk away and go somewhere else. Because it's boring and not challenging. PVE NPC's need a serious buff. They need to use more abilities more often in solo game play, with a damage increases.

    Just like mentioned above the PVP crowd never gets thanked, for the abilities they get improved. They just get scorned for the abilities they point out that are to strong. If a ability is to strong for PVP, then it's three times to strong for PVE.

    Is exactly why we don't need pvp dictating pve balance for the 95% of players who aren't pvp'ing with you. Of course we don't thank you for nerfing whole ships, skills, and other stuff. You don't deserve to be thanked for any of it. As if it's altruism for the game and not selfish narcissism at play in the first place. You guys don't like pve, so you should be the ones to decide how it goes, even though you still wont like it afterwards. No thanks.

    Some nerfs are necessary, The dev team is completely capable of doing that on their own. PvP will always have balance problems because the metagame changes rapidly. But the answer isn't to continually nerf stuff for the other 95%. The answer is to let pvp and pve be separate in how things work. Guild Wars did that after 4 years of hundreds of nerfs everytime the players found a new loophole. Finally skills work differently in pvp than in pve, and both sides were able to be happy.

    I'd be happy for pve enemies to use more skills, to play better. I'd really like it if that's what happened when you upped the difficulty level. But "pve is easy so it doesn't matter if we nerf everything" just puts pvp on a pedastal that it frankly does not deserve. It is a tiny, tiny niche of play in STO. PvE is the lifeblood and the income for this game, and the playstyle of 95% of players. I'm just tired of taking valid choices for play off the board for you guys.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Have you actually read the counter-arguments?

    [*]The moments where you do not have sufficient AoE capabilities to deal with the spam, and you're out of control counters, it is likely you cannot fight effective at all - your primary damage dealers are "stuck", unable to target the intended target, making coordination impossible.
    [/LIST]

    That is something anyone with experience in PvP can atnicipate. Yes, even 2 hours after the release. (Particularly since some people already worried that a Tractor Beam Mine Launcher could be a possible reward...)

    ,
    this is what the other side should be trying to do in pvp it is likely you cannot fight effective at all and this
    making coordination impossible. if you take these to things out of pvp then it is not an true pvp game.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    The queues are a wasteland now. If youre lucky enough to find a match, you're most likely cannon fodder for the top 100 players who dominate pvp and play pvp exclusively. So lets divide up the matches even more. Frankly we should be shutting down half the maps we have now so we can find a match in under a half hour. But pvp is a wasteland because nobody wants to play it with you guys.

    That's an interesting way to state things.

    The way I see it - the PvP players are actually some of the few that actually want to play with other players. The majority of PvE seems to be solo. And if you get in a fleet action ? How much "playing together" is there going on? I remember the frustrating attempts at completing the Crystalline Fleet Action because people were just there, but hardly playing with each other and working together.

    The problem is not that no one wants to play with the PvPers. It's that so many people want to play with other people at all.

    Or maybe it's not a problem. Just a thing. And we have to give something to everyone. Decently balanced PvP. Interesting and challenging PvE fights. Raids for people that don't like to compete but love to cooperate. Missions for people that like the story-telling.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    Is exactly why we don't need pvp dictating pve balance for the 95% of players who aren't pvp'ing with you. Of course we don't thank you for nerfing whole ships, skills, and other stuff. You don't deserve to be thanked for any of it. As if it's altruism for the game and not selfish narcissism at play in the first place. You guys don't like pve, so you should be the ones to decide how it goes, even though you still wont like it afterwards. No thanks.

    First of all you don't know if only 5% players PVP or not. You don't know how many players PVP in STO or want too. You're just making that number up.

    You act like the only reason there are nerfs is because of PVP. There would be nerfs if there wasn't any PVP. It's not the PVP players calling the shots. The developers are the one who decided if the ability is to strong, they have the data. The PVP players just bring awareness to it.

    PVP players don't decide how PVE goes the developers do. You have the tail waging the dog.
    .

    Some nerfs are necessary, The dev team is completely capable of doing that on their own. PvP will always have balance problems because the metagame changes rapidly. But the answer isn't to continually nerf stuff for the other 95%. The answer is to let pvp and pve be separate in how things work. Guild Wars did that after 4 years of hundreds of nerfs everytime the players found a new loophole. Finally skills work differently in pvp than in pve, and both sides were able to be happy.

    The dev's do the nerfs on there own, they have the data you have speculation. I really doubt they take really well balanced PVE abilities and nerf them because a few people want it that way. The PVP'ers aren't forcing them to change the game they don't give the orders. If you are really happy with the way Guilds Wars does it maybe that's the game for you.

    You still don't know if only 5% of the players PVP. That's a very low ball estimate chances are it's three times that number.


    I'd be happy for pve enemies to use more skills, to play better. I'd really like it if that's what happened when you upped the difficulty level. But "pve is easy so it doesn't matter if we nerf everything" just puts pvp on a pedastal that it frankly does not deserve. It is a tiny, tiny niche of play in STO. PvE is the lifeblood and the income for this game, and the playstyle of 95% of players. I'm just tired of taking valid choices for play off the board for you guys.


    PVE in this game is so simple cannon rapid fire and beam over load are overpowered. Viral Matrix was so overpowered with jam sensors some ships would do almost no damage to me, if any. When you can just auto attack and win it's really far to simple.

    The reason only small amount of players play PVP in this game is because it's so bad, and limited. The games with really good PVP often have high populations. Really good PVP will bring players to a game. Some of their friends will come along who just PVE, overly simple PVE will not.

    Mmo's have to be diverse now you can get PVE in any game. What you can't get is good PVP everywhere. This games overly simple PVE makes it a very one dimensional game. You have know way of knowing if only 5% of the players in STO PVP you're making that number up.

    When you can get by with auto attack any ability is a valid choice.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    That's an interesting way to state things.

    The way I see it - the PvP players are actually some of the few that actually want to play with other players. The majority of PvE seems to be solo. And if you get in a fleet action ? How much "playing together" is there going on? I remember the frustrating attempts at completing the Crystalline Fleet Action because people were just there, but hardly playing with each other and working together.

    The problem is not that no one wants to play with the PvPers. It's that so many people want to play with other people at all.

    Or maybe it's not a problem. Just a thing. And we have to give something to everyone. Decently balanced PvP. Interesting and challenging PvE fights. Raids for people that don't like to compete but love to cooperate. Missions for people that like the story-telling.

    I'd include the STF'ers in this category, but I'd agree with you that not so many people want to team up in STO, certainly not compared to most MMOs. In fact I maintain that STO doesn't act like an MMO at all; it's more of an RPG with multiplayer elements, STO is more story driven than teamwork driven. In fact, in numerous cases the game penalizes you for teaming up. You want anomalies? They don't scale up for the number of players. You want deuterium in the Distress Call daily in Eta Eridani? Dont team up or you'll share the 3 available with everyone there. You want to finish most dailies or missions in a timely manner? The enemies do scale up so they often take longer if you take a team, especially if you bring 5. But 5 is what you get to bring. No raids like in most MMOs here. STO took the Massively right out of MMO from the beginning. They made the game very accessible to the solo player, and that's what we have. I have to think it's intentional by design.

    Pvp'ers do want to play with other people...and beat them. And it is a virtual certainty that the bottom 90% of players will not be as good at pvp as the top 10% of pvp'ers, which is pretty much all that is left from what I've seen.

    I'm not against balanced pvp. I would do it a lot more if there were skill ratings and plenty of people to play against so I could compete with people at my own skill level. What I'm against is pvp balance taking priority over pve fun, when the vast majority of players are those solo pve'ers you mentioned. I just want pvp balance to stay in pvp, and let pve balance be it's own entity. I also believe in buffing alternatives rather than always nerfing something else.

    Thank you for a stimulating post.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Englebert wrote:
    PVE in this game is so simple cannon rapid fire and beam over load are overpowered. Viral Matrix was so overpowered with jam sensors some ships would do almost no damage to me, if any. When you can just auto attack and win it's really far to simple.

    The reason only small amount of players play PVP in this game is because it's so bad, and limited. The games with really good PVP often have high populations. Really good PVP will bring players to a game. Some of their friends will come along who just PVE, overly simple PVE will not.

    Mmo's have to be diverse now you can get PVE in any game. What you can't get is good PVP everywhere. This games overly simple PVE makes it a very one dimensional game. You have know way of knowing if only 5% of the players in STO PVP you're making that number up.

    When you can get by with auto attack any ability is a valid choice.

    You don't seem to like this game very much. The pve is inane and simple and no challenge and the pvp isn't good either, from what I can get from your posts. Your point of view is that pve is so simple that it should take a back seat to pvp balance pretty much across the board, if I get you correctly. You seem to believe that if STO would just become a badass place for pvp then people would flock to play it.

    I don't agree with much of that. Pve is too simple in normal mode and doesn't become actually more difficult when you up the difficulty'; it just takes longer doing the same thing. I do agree somewhat with you on that front. It would be nice if enemies were more like the Breen and used some skills. But I don't agree with much else you've said. Good story driven pve isn't that easy to come by, while competitive pvp is really, really easy to find. Most games that come out, certainly those that play online, tend to be competitive. The most popular game right now is Call of Duty in its many iterations; and online it's all about fighting players. Starcraft 2 has millions of copies sold, and most of those were for playing players on Battle.net. Thousands still play Counterstrike ten years after it's release every day. But MMOs don't tend to follow that sort of play. WoW, the absolute king of MMOs, has no more than 25% of it's players doing pvp when they've gone a long way to make it compelling. Most MMOs don't even get close to that percentage. And STO isn't most MMOs. STO is first and foremost a Star Trek game. It's a story driven game about a single captain and a single ship for the most part.

    But that doesn't mean we should take fun stuff away from pve because a few pvp'ers want balance. At most it means we balance that stuff for pvp and leave the rest of us out of it. My point from the beginning is that pvp should keep their nerfs to themselves.

    Oh, and you're right. I did make up the 5% number. But from what I can tell it's probably not even that high. Even with your pro pvp bias you don't think it's more than 15%, but I'll tell you why I think it's much lower than that: I look at the queues. I often see no more than 10-20 people in a queue in all maps total. I know the pvp guilds are probably challenging each other so there are more people than that engaging in pvp, but that's 2 five man teams each playing each match. I estimate from the number of pvp guilds that people have heard of that there are perhaps 100 top tier players doing pvp out of perhaps 100,000 total players. I'd love for dstahl to come on and give us some hard numbers but they wont. But if the numbers were high they'd be happy to give them out.

    Maybe pve needs some improvement in the AI enemies. But the story driven part of the game is by far it's best part, and it's what draws the vast majority of people. Making that less fun for 100 top tier pvp'ers isn't a good idea. By your standards, we should nerf everything pve players do, and not care what they get or don't get. And to an extent, the devs seem to agree with you, since they nerf things primarily for pvp balance. I'm trying to push back against that point of view, and hope that they'll eventually not penalize everyone because of the few.

    It is against forum rules to tell someone to go play a different game. But I played Guild Wars from launch through more than 4 years of both pvp and pve. I have 2 accounts, played every class through every campaign, and by any stadard got my money's worth out of it. I use that example because I know it so very well. Now I play STO. I"ve been a Trek fan for the last 40 years or so, and now I get to be my own version of Kirk or Picard. I have 11 max ranked characters and 13 more I'm still levelling up. I've played pretty much every ship and class combination there is. I'm invested in this game. I obviously like playing it. So I wont be going back to Guild Wars thank you. And I wont tell you to go play a different game, just note that you don't seem to like this one very much, and that there are lots and lots of good pvp games out there.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    I'd include the STF'ers in this category, but I'd agree with you that not so many people want to team up in STO, certainly not compared to most MMOs. In fact I maintain that STO doesn't act like an MMO at all; it's more of an RPG with multiplayer elements, STO is more story driven than teamwork driven. In fact, in numerous cases the game penalizes you for teaming up. You want anomalies? They don't scale up for the number of players. You want deuterium in the Distress Call daily in Eta Eridani? Dont team up or you'll share the 3 available with everyone there. You want to finish most dailies or missions in a timely manner? The enemies do scale up so they often take longer if you take a team, especially if you bring 5. But 5 is what you get to bring. No raids like in most MMOs here. STO took the Massively right out of MMO from the beginning. They made the game very accessible to the solo player, and that's what we have. I have to think it's intentional by design.

    Pvp'ers do want to play with other people...and beat them. And it is a virtual certainty that the bottom 90% of players will not be as good at pvp as the top 10% of pvp'ers, which is pretty much all that is left from what I've seen.

    I'm not against balanced pvp. I would do it a lot more if there were skill ratings and plenty of people to play against so I could compete with people at my own skill level. What I'm against is pvp balance taking priority over pve fun, when the vast majority of players are those solo pve'ers you mentioned. I just want pvp balance to stay in pvp, and let pve balance be it's own entity. I also believe in buffing alternatives rather than always nerfing something else.

    Thank you for a stimulating post.
    I'd really want Cryptic to work on the Fleet Actions and other missions.

    In the new weekly episodes, they seem to get some teaming going on - simply because people like to hunt the accolades. Maybe that's an avenue to achieve more. Side missions in the Fleet Actions where you need teamwork beyond firepower. Alhena Daily reworked so that you can get even more deuterium supplies if you got different career players there perhaps.
    Science: Scanning the ship debris yields more computer fragments for everyone
    Engineering: Help the Ferengi repair his fuel depot and gather a few extra items
    Tactical: Improve the Ferengi's communication encryption so that the Cardassian cannot antipate his next shipments (yielding extra fuel surpulus)...
    Diplomacy: Improve the payout

    So much to do...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    You don't seem to like this game very much. The pve is inane and simple and no challenge and the pvp isn't good either, from what I can get from your posts. Your point of view is that pve is so simple that it should take a back seat to pvp balance pretty much across the board, if I get you correctly. You seem to believe that if STO would just become a badass place for pvp then people would flock to play it.

    No what I'm saying is PVE is so simple it's not challenging. PVP only has one map the players use and it got boring fast. PVE isn't balanced because it's so simple. If you rush threw multiple mobs so easily with hardly taking any damage you are overpowered and the NPC's are gimps. That's not balanced PVE. Balanced PVE is that there is a chance you could fail, not no chance of failing.

    STO needs something to draw players to it and PVE game play thats to easy and not challenging and overly repetitive wont do that.


    I don't agree with much of that. Pve is too simple in normal mode and doesn't become actually more difficult when you up the difficulty'; it just takes longer doing the same thing. I do agree somewhat with you on that front. It would be nice if enemies were more like the Breen and used some skills. But I don't agree with much else you've said. Good story driven pve isn't that easy to come by, while competitive pvp is really, really easy to find. Most games that come out, certainly those that play online, tend to be competitive. The most popular game right now is Call of Duty in its many iterations; and online it's all about fighting players. Starcraft 2 has millions of copies sold, and most of those were for playing players on Battle.net. Thousands still play Counterstrike ten years after it's release every day. But MMOs don't tend to follow that sort of play. WoW, the absolute king of MMOs, has no more than 25% of it's players doing pvp when they've gone a long way to make it compelling. Most MMOs don't even get close to that percentage. And STO isn't most MMOs. STO is first and foremost a Star Trek game. It's a story driven game about a single captain and a single ship for the most part.

    PVE on elite isn't really difficult. The boss fight just take longer and it makes space combat much more repetitious.

    Good story PVE isn't what lots of games are looking for. I don't think a lot of stories in STO are that good.
    Good completive PVP is hard to find and good story driven PVE is everywhere. The stories in this game aren't really any better than the other MMO's. The game play isn't as good as many.

    Call of duty is a FPS multi player game. 25% of a games population is a very big deal. Some people will leave a game when their friends leave. You have to ask yourself how popular WoW would be without it's PVP. WoW got very popular because it's so diverse it had really good PVP, PVE, amusement park and sandbox game play. Good story driven single player content wont bring large numbers to a MMO or keep them subscribing. MMO's need much more.


    But that doesn't mean we should take fun stuff away from pve because a few pvp'ers want balance. At most it means we balance that stuff for pvp and leave the rest of us out of it. My point from the beginning is that pvp should keep their nerfs to themselves.

    You make the developers sound incompetent they ruin the game for what a few players want and no other reason. It all goes back that PVE is so easy most of the abilities they nerf are more overpowered in PVE than PVP. They have actual data you're making assumptions.

    Usually when PVP players ask for something that's overpowered to be nerfed. It's after they have tried to counter it with abilities and builds and nothing works against it. Far more tactics and strategy than NPC's can do. In ships that are much stronger than the NPC's ships. So it really doesn't make much sense that's it not overpowered in PVE.


    Oh, and you're right. I did make up the 5% number. But from what I can tell it's probably not even that high. Even with your pro pvp bias you don't think it's more than 15%, but I'll tell you why I think it's much lower than that: I look at the queues. I often see no more than 10-20 people in a queue in all maps total. I know the pvp guilds are probably challenging each other so there are more people than that engaging in pvp, but that's 2 five man teams each playing each match. I estimate from the number of pvp guilds that people have heard of that there are perhaps 100 top tier players doing pvp out of perhaps 100,000 total players. I'd love for dstahl to come on and give us some hard numbers but they wont. But if the numbers were high they'd be happy to give them out.

    What you can tell is nothing you don't know how many people play STO. How many play STO and want to PVP, and don't because it's boring. Or how many quit STO over the poor PVP.

    I can definitely tell you are PVE biased to the point where you use PVP as a scapegoat. For all the problems of a game. I play both parts of a game but I find PVP to be much more challenging and fun.

    I think it was probably closer to 20 to 25% who want or wanted to PVP but don't bacause many PVP'ers left. I also gave a low ball estimate. So they don't bother with the queues to do a PVP game that was boring three months after launch.

    There is no way you could estimate how many players use PVP in STO, or want too. Or have left STO because of the poor state PVP is in.Your estimate of a 100,000 subscribers playing STO is probably high also.



    Maybe pve needs some improvement in the AI enemies. But the story driven part of the game is by far it's best part, and it's what draws the vast majority of people. Making that less fun for 100 top tier pvp'ers isn't a good idea. By your standards, we should nerf everything pve players do, and not care what they get or don't get. And to an extent, the devs seem to agree with you, since they nerf things primarily for pvp balance. I'm trying to push back against that point of view, and hope that they'll eventually not penalize everyone because of the few.

    The AI definitely needs improvement. Story driven part is best for you, and that's not saying much for a game. Most people who want a good story read a book or watch a movie. Really don't think there is a large number of MMO gamers who want a good story over good game play. Large portions of players don't care about the stories very much, and don't read the quest dialog and just complete the objectives.

    I never said to nerf anything PVE players do so don't misquote me. I said that if something is overpowered in PVP. That it's probably three times stronger in PVE. Players can adapt and counter far better than NPC's. In ships that are far stronger than NPC's ships. It seems like people who only PVE can't adapt.

    Like I sad the developers have the data so they know how strong an ability is. That's why something gets changed. I have never heard of something being overpowered in PVP and underpowered in PVE. PVE'ers get really mad when a overpowered ability gets balanced.


    It is against forum rules to tell someone to go play a different game. But I played Guild Wars from launch through more than 4 years of both pvp and pve. I have 2 accounts, played every class through every campaign, and by any stadard got my money's worth out of it. I use that example because I know it so very well. Now I play STO. I"ve been a Trek fan for the last 40 years or so, and now I get to be my own version of Kirk or Picard. I have 11 max ranked characters and 13 more I'm still levelling up. I've played pretty much every ship and class combination there is. I'm invested in this game. I obviously like playing it. So I wont be going back to Guild Wars thank you. And I wont tell you to go play a different game, just note that you don't seem to like this one very much, and that there are lots and lots of good pvp games out there.

    If I broke the rules you can report me. I don't think bringing something that complexed. To STO's limited development team is a very good idea. They have to work really hard to maintain this game. Then try and develop a different system for PVE and PVP isn't realistic. I also think it's a bad idea. Because it's really hard to believe that something overpowered in PVP isn't even stronger in PVE. They can't counter or adapt in weaker ships than players use. So to me it's myth that PVP messes up balance if anything it adjusts it.

    I'm glad you liked Guild Wars. No, theres not lots of good PVP in MMO's out there. I have played many MMO's that's really not true. Stories and PVE are a dime a dozen in MMO's.


    .
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    I'd really want Cryptic to work on the Fleet Actions and other missions.

    In the new weekly episodes, they seem to get some teaming going on - simply because people like to hunt the accolades. Maybe that's an avenue to achieve more. Side missions in the Fleet Actions where you need teamwork beyond firepower. Alhena Daily reworked so that you can get even more deuterium supplies if you got different career players there perhaps.
    Science: Scanning the ship debris yields more computer fragments for everyone
    Engineering: Help the Ferengi repair his fuel depot and gather a few extra items
    Tactical: Improve the Ferengi's communication encryption so that the Cardassian cannot antipate his next shipments (yielding extra fuel surpulus)...
    Diplomacy: Improve the payout

    So much to do...

    Fleet actions are badly hurt by the lack of teamwork and the lack of preparation for teaming that the game gives you. You need a good team to do most of them, and you rarely get one. They'll be the sole refuge of organized fleets once they put in the new fleet queues for them. STFs are doubly so.

    They should scale rewards, including deuterium and anomalies based on number of players, not just enemies. Give bonuses to synergies by having all 3 classes on a team, though I really don't miss "looking for monk" or "looking for healer" waits for missions. The accolades were a great addition in the last series. You didn't have to take one of each class, but you were glad if you had them.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    Fleet actions are badly hurt by the lack of teamwork and the lack of preparation for teaming that the game gives you. You need a good team to do most of them, and you rarely get one. They'll be the sole refuge of organized fleets once they put in the new fleet queues for them. STFs are doubly so.

    They should scale rewards, including deuterium and anomalies based on number of players, not just enemies. Give bonuses to synergies by having all 3 classes on a team, though I really don't miss "looking for monk" or "looking for healer" waits for missions. The accolades were a great addition in the last series. You didn't have to take one of each class, but you were glad if you had them.

    Fleet Actions? Rofl.

    You Mean STFs. There a modicum of Team Work is required, mostly so you do not pull the incorrect mobs at a bad time.

    Fleet actions difficult. That's rich. I solo Fleet Actions Regularly. Teamwork required in Fleet Actions jeeze. Infact the only one that's really not easy, is only difficult because you can't Close The Instance (CE).

    PvE is Space Bar To Win. You don't even really need your boffs to do it, particularly space combat. This is because A Npcs do no damage. B Npcs have no true tanking capability. C The Ai scripting in general is infamously bad.

    CTBs were going to be broken from the gate. We all knew it, both for PvE and Pvp. (the only time they really would affect PvE so heinously is KA at the start) generally ships that run CTBs do minimal damage regardless of weapon slots. This allows them to be spammed in such a way you literally can not target anyone on the screen between them, and the normal pre scorpion fighter spam (which only compounded the problem)

    I hate to tell you this, but if something works well in pvp it works triple or maybe four times as well in PvE because of just how Lame Npcs are in this game. Balance changes hardly ever truly affect PvE unless you are completely unfamiliar with videogames and maybe have never played one before. Ever.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Shakkar wrote: »
    You act as if the dev team is completely unable to balance things for pve without pvp input, when as you say, pvp is a very different game than pve. We don't need the pvp community to balance pve. I know you think we do but we do not. If something is overpowered for pve than the dev team is completely capable of fixing it, since they do in fact play these missions. They have testers on staff who do just that.

    The Devs are far from incompetent, but when exactly would any PvEers step forward to say any Power/Ability/Item is overpowered??? How exactly would the Devs come to know that something is OP? Think about that one for a moment. Really think about it. Is PvEer going to say, "Hey I've been doing these missions and, well, I think <insert unbalanced item> has a problem with it." Not one PvEer is going to do that. Why? A couple reasons, 1) "Kirk Syndrome" i.e., everything should fall before my beams; 2) PvEers don't pay that much attention to the game mechanics. (I'm not being disparaging I'm just stating a truth. I know I didn't when I started; it was only when I entered the PvP arena and got my shuttle bay handed to me that I had that epiphany.)
    Shakkar wrote: »
    So lets set up the separate rooms, and good luck finding a match. I'm sort of for this idea, since maybe it will find a way to keep the pvp community out of pvp matches.

    This is something the PvP community has wanted since the beginning. But from your perspective PvP screws things up.. non-sequitur.
    Shakkar wrote: »
    You lost all credibility when you refer to people you don't like/agree with as whiners. One man's whining is another man's reasoned argument. You just whined about whiners. Pretty soon you'll be crying and qq'ing. As if anyone reads this stuff and sobs at their computers. Argue the argument, don't resort to lazy argument by namecalling. It's just demeaning yourself to everyone who isn't a lazy arguer themselves.

    The only people referring to others as whining/crying/qq'ing are the PvEers saying that of PvPers. And I quote:
    These people aren't even reading the arguments about how that reduces one more weapon or how they can just use polarise hull and update their stragety, they just cry.
    just to make a point about their hatred for the weapon. The whinners are using the weapon to bully other people into hating it.
    dorko1 wrote:
    just to make a point about their hatred for the weapon. The whinners are using the weapon to bully other people into hating it.

    --
    Shakkar wrote: »
    But that doesn't mean we should take fun stuff away from pve because a few pvp'ers want balance. At most it means we balance that stuff for pvp and leave the rest of us out of it. My point from the beginning is that pvp should keep their nerfs to themselves.
    ...
    By your standards, we should nerf everything pve players do, and not care what they get or don't get. And to an extent, the devs seem to agree with you, since they nerf things primarily for pvp balance. I'm trying to push back against that point of view, and hope that they'll eventually not penalize everyone because of the few.

    How is the balancing taking the "fun" away from PvE? You've got a new toy; that is more than you had before. It sounds lame but it it is true. Now who is the one (not you individually) crying/not able to adapt? As has been explained before we do not just call for balance nerfs we call for b-a-l-a-n-c-e period. The Devs are nerfing/buffing what we bring to light because we are the only ones discussing these issues. Question: When have any balance issues been brought up by the PvE community? Answer: Never.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Except for Mustrum's, Tranceaddict's,Englebert's and Wraiven's posts I'll risk it and say

    LOL @ THIS THREAD
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    genxcraig wrote: »
    Except for Mustrum's, Tranceaddict's,Englebert's and Wraiven's posts I'll risk it and say

    LOL @ THIS THREAD

    I guess you could elaborate but that would make your comment less "witty."
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    genxcraig wrote: »
    Except for Mustrum's, Tranceaddict's,Englebert's and Wraiven's posts

    elaboration contained within
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    .............okay.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    The Devs are far from incompetent, but when exactly would any PvEers step forward to say any Power/Ability/Item is overpowered??? How exactly would the Devs come to know that something is OP? Think about that one for a moment. Really think about it. Is PvEer going to say, "Hey I've been doing these missions and, well, I think <insert unbalanced item> has a problem with it." Not one PvEer is going to do that. Why? A couple reasons, 1) "Kirk Syndrome" i.e., everything should fall before my beams; 2) PvEers don't pay that much attention to the game mechanics. (I'm not being disparaging I'm just stating a truth. I know I didn't when I started; it was only when I entered the PvP arena and got my shuttle bay handed to me that I had that epiphany.)



    This is something the PvP community has wanted since the beginning. But from your perspective PvP screws things up.. non-sequitur.



    The only people referring to others as whining/crying/qq'ing are the PvEers saying that of PvPers. And I quote:







    --



    How is the balancing taking the "fun" away from PvE? You've got a new toy; that is more than you had before. It sounds lame but it it is true. Now who is the one (not you individually) crying/not able to adapt? As has been explained before we do not just call for balance nerfs we call for b-a-l-a-n-c-e period. The Devs are nerfing/buffing what we bring to light because we are the only ones discussing these issues. Question: When have any balance issues been brought up by the PvE community? Answer: Never.

    You quoted me as saying the devs have testers on staff. The other devs play the game on pve as well. That's how they tweak pve separately from pvp.

    I don't condone pve'ers using lazy arguments by namecalling either. But you really think I can't find a hundred examples of pvp'ers using "whine" "cry" "qq'ing" etc.? I hear it pretty much every day from the pvp community.

    I know the pvp'ers will always want something changed. No matter how many times we nerf something, the metagame of pvp will change and something else will become overpowered. So it's not like the devs wont always, always have your input. What I want is for them to treat pvp separately and not always nerf everyone because you 100 folks have a hard time in pvp. This game is primarily pve.

    How do pvp'ers take the fun out of pve? They've done it lots of times. Thanks to pvp, we went six months with gimped sci ships, that were still powerful for pvp but took twice as long to do any pve mission as doing them with a cruiser and about 3 times as long as with an escort. I pride myself on flying every ship, but I took all of my characters (24 of them now, 11 maxed) out of sci ships for six months. That was less fun. RSP used to be a must have skill that was arguably overpowered. Now RSP 1 is down 95% of the time, I took it off of every single ship I fly. That was less fun because it gave me one less valid choice of skill to play. I used to fly the Vo'Quv carrier in pve; it was a monster. Now it's a pathetic choice compared to the Negh'var, the Vor'cha retrofit, or even the Kar'fi, which didn't need a nerf but got one thanks to pvp. That was less fun not having a ship I used to like to fly. Now we got scorpion fighters and cloaking tractor mines, a new game mechanic for everyone, and they're about to be heavily nerfed because of pvp. That's less fun because it gives us less choice once again. Most of these changes should have been just given to pvp but the devs will stubbornly stick to nerfing everyone for you guys. That's what I'm pushing back against. I used Guild Wars as an example of a dev team doing this to everyone for the sake of pvp balance, doing it hundreds of times over 4 years, and then finally giving in and making skills work differently in pvp than in pve, and it was much better for the pve players, and didn't hurt pvp at all. I just want that for STO; I want them to learn from GW's mistakes.

    Pvp'ers are not in this for the game as a whole. Many of them in this thread don't even like pve. They are in this so that they few will get a better match. I want the other 95% to have as much fun as possible without hurting you guys either. But for now, you guys win over and over, and we get nerfed for no good reason, or nerfed excessively.

    Go ahead and laugh, some of you. I don't expect to convince you, since some of you spend your days belittling others in pvp matches already and seem to have trouble with human empathy. It seems to be part of the hardcore pvp psyche. I do hope to convince the devs who read this post. And eventually I think they'll get tired of having to nerf things for the next 4 years for you guys just like the GW devs did. Because, as I said, the metagame will always change for pvp; there will always be a need for another nerf as you guys react to the changes and something else will be op.

    I did really think about it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    How can you shoot my idea down and then claim that pvper's are trying to stack the odds in their favor?

    You aren't making any sense.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Admittedly, I've only skimmed this topic, but in my experience the precision of these skills really only matters to pvpers. You can do most PVE content blindfolded in this game. Whenever a nerf happens, it affects pvpers more than anyone else. That's why PVP queues are dead these days.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Kasidy wrote:
    Admittedly, I've only skimmed this topic, but in my experience the precision of these skills really only matters to pvpers. You can do most PVE content blindfolded in this game. Whenever a nerf happens, it affects pvpers more than anyone else. That's why PVP queues are dead these days.

    "pve is easy so we can nerf you over and over and it doesn't matter; only pvp balance matters" is the essential drift of the pvp community over and over. Yet that ignores the fact that the vast majority of players are pve players who don't appreciate being nerfed over and over for you guys. It also shows disdain for the vast majority of the game itself. You guys don't like pve, it's inane and simple and too easy, and nerfing it doesn't matter. I get it. But most of us like doing it. We don't play pvp, mostly because we don't like being cannon fodder for the top tier who are pretty much all that's left. Most matches I've seen go 15-0 or close to it. When I play pugs as KDF I'm usually on the 15 side. When I play pugs as Feds it's usually on the zero side. But I don't play that much anymore on either side because it takes half an hour to get an lopsided match. STO pvp is a wasteland compared to pretty much every other MMO I've played, and I've played a lot of them since 1997 when the term was first coined. I don't want the last remaining denizens of a forsaken pvp game to decide how the rest of us play. I want the devs to nerf pvp and pve separately. I want them to occaisionally buff an alternative instead of nerfing things. I'm talking more to them than I am to the pvp community, which has shown a hostility to pve in general.

    You blame nerfs for hurting pvp, yet those nerfs are almost always for the sake of pvp'ers and at the request of the pvp community. I frankly blame the pvp community itself largely for the state of affairs. I also blame Cryptic for making the KDF a pvp-only faction to begin with, which had far reaching consequences because it put all the pvp enthusiasts into one faction, gave them nothing to do except pvp for months, while the Feds were scanning flowers in Hromi cluster. That led to the lopsided scores we see now, followed often by the belittling attitude of the pvp'ers you find in every game, and people don't like being cannon fodder and insulted for long, and they don't do it for long. So here we are, being nerfed again for a tiny, tiny remnant of the game who still pvps. But you guys think it doesn't matter, because "pve is easy". Being nerfed isn't fun, yet you guys seem to think we should just grin and bear it no matter how many times it happens, how many ships we have to respec out of, no matter how many times we no longer have fun doing what used to be fun. That's your perogative. I'll show the other side.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2011
    Sorry, but what I said is true. PVE content is still so easy I don't even bother with it anymore. The AI is weak. Blame them for that, not us.

    And how can you blame the "PVP community"? WHAT PVP community? Have you seen the queues recently? Yes, but the nerfs were for our benefit :rolleyes:
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